Monochrome Multitudes Artist Lecture Series

monochrome

Autumn Quarter, 2022
Cochrane-Woods Art Center, University of Chicago
Monochrome Multitudes Artist Lecture Series

An artist lecture series in conjunction with the Smart Museum of Art's exhibition, Monochrome Multitudes. Programming will include weekly artist lectures through Autumn Quarter, including Arturo Herrera (Oct. 6), Dan Peterman (Oct. 13), Sheila Hicks (Oct. 20), Amanda Williams (Oct. 27), Byron Kim (Nov. 3), Haegue Yang (Nov. 17), and Tobias Rehberger (Dec. 1).

Support for the Monochrome Multitudes Artist Lecture Series has been provided by the Goethe-Institut and the following University of Chicago partners: Center for East Asian Studies, Center for Latin American Studies, Center for the Art of East Asia, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, Department of Art History, Franke Institute for the Humanities, Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, Open Practice Committee in the Department of Visual Arts, and Wigeland Fund in the Division of the Humanities.

About the Exhibition
This exhibition traces “the monochrome” as a fundamental if surprisingly expansive artistic practice. Revisiting classic modernist ideas about flatness, idealized form, and colors, Monochrome Multitudes opens up this seemingly reductive art to reveal its global resonance and creative possibilities while working toward a more expansive narrative of 20th and 21st century art.

Within the exhibition, art is presented in monochromatic groupings—rooms of blue, white, yellow, gray, black, and red works respectively—alternating with thematic sections where single colors engage concerns with the body, urban space, sound, and other topics. Switching between these two types of spaces, the exhibition suggests that works that look alike are often quite different, and that works that look different can share historical, thematic, or conceptual propositions. Throughout, Monochrome Multitudes engages North American art in a global dialogue and emphasizes the significance of multiple media ranging from weaving to wall-painting to video, and multiple materials including footballs, pantyhose, and Vinylite.